Readers Question: Why do the Government often fail to achieve its main objectives of high economic growth, price stability, and a surplus on the balance of payments. Other objectives worth adding are low unemployment, low government borrowing and maybe stable exchange rate. Looking at the current climate of the UK economy, the government is only …
Readers Question What are your predictions for us/Canadian dollar currency. Do you think they will reach par in 2009 ? Recently the Canadian dollar has been weak against the US dollar. This is because of the plunge in commodity prices which depress Canadian export revenues and decrease value of Canadian Dollar. Despite many problems in …
Readers Question: Is there any other political influence on the falling rate of sterling, something like monetary policy or political uncertainty? And why did some news reports say inflation and weak sterling could be helpful to UK economy? Thanks. The value of a currency is primarily influenced by economic factors. E.g. weak sterling can be …
Readers Question: Greece has a current account deficit of almost 14% (!) of GDP and Greece is a member of the EU. How can it resolve the problem if it cannot devalue the currency ( the quick way out, which was used in the past when the greek drachma was around) and when productivity is …
Why is monetary policy easier to conduct than fiscal policy in a highly divided national political environment? Monetary policy is usually implemented by independent monetary authorities. For example, in UK, monetary policy is implemented by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Therefore, they can take politically unpopular decisions such as increasing interest …
Readers Question: Could deflation lead to devaluation of the UK Pound? Deflation in the UK means prices fall. This hasn’t happened since the 1930s, but, if it did happen, it could lead to a further depreciation in Pound Sterling. Firstly, deflation would mean interest rates would likely fall to 0%. This fall in interest rates …
Readers Question: WHAT ARE THE PREDICTION FOR THE DOLLAR $ AGAINST THE EURO FOR 2009? 2009, will probably see both EU and US economies enter into recession. So far, the EU has been slow to cut interest rates; it has given greater prominence to the spike in inflation rather than the slowing economy. However, the …
In response to an essay on – Is a Dollar collapse likely? These are some readers questions “US debt is high, but so is European debt”. Could you perhaps elaborate on that or point me to articles that discuss European debt? National debt in EU countries is a real problem. Countries like Italy already have …